World Cup Science

I've been busy lately making a collection of World Cup themed videos with scientific twists.

Today the focus was physics, starting with this one for Sixty Symbols about the now notorious Jabulani football.



Featured in the video are some of the people I occasionally play five-a-side football with, mainly physicists and astronomers.

Some of them didn't like the ball, but I thought it was good (you can even see me taking a free kick in the above film!)

It feels a bit cheap and "plasticky" to touch, but I thought it pinged nicely of the foot.

After filming a few free kicks and other footage, we staged an impromptu penalty shoot-out which I made into a bonus video.



By the way, the football "stars" featured in the video are Tony Padilla, Mark Brook, Fernando Buitrago Alonso, Amandeep Josan, Bret Podgorzec, Amanda Bauer, James Clewett, Boris Häußler and Udai Panicker.

They showed up at short notice and I'm very grateful.

Also a quick thanks to the university groundsmen (who set up the goals and painted lines just for us) and to the School of Chemistry which lent us the lab coats.

And thanks to my friend Natalie for loaning us the ball (they are too pricey to buy just for the video!)

Keeping the theme of World Cup, here's another one we made about vuvuzelas...



Professor Philip Moriarty who features in this video is a real music nut and loves doing anything that involves sound waves and harmonics!

This extra video of just the raw sound files was put together for the super anoraks who love sound engineering!



And for those who missed it earlier this month, here's The Periodic Table of Videos film about the World Cup trophy.



Is this the end of my World Cup adventure? Maybe not.

I have a language expert who might be able to help me with another video for Words of the World.

As always, stay tuned!